


Here As On A Darkling Plain

by mimosaeyes



Category: Countdown to Countdown (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And yet, Angst, Banter, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, I hope, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension, in that order, probably, the violence is not that graphic but I'm erring on the safe side
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-10-25 07:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10759146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimosaeyes/pseuds/mimosaeyes
Summary: Lillium pivots, puts one hand at his elbow and the other over his mouth, and backs him up against the alley wall.Or: Back in Washington State Lab, Lillium told Iris to let him distract the glitch if cornered. Iris does not.Withartfrom vel :O





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the poem “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold.
> 
> The next time someone asks what I intend to do with my English Literature major, I can tell them, “Well, I’m going to reference late Victorian poetry in the gay fanfic I write to procrastinate and de-stress.”

They’ve left the diner someways behind when Lillium suddenly stiffens, faltering mid-step.

“What is it?” Iris starts to say, only he’s cut off as Lillium pivots, puts one hand at his elbow and the other over his mouth, and backs him up against the alley wall. Iris is too surprised to put up any real resistance: instead, he vaguely fists at Lillium’s vest, grounding himself in the roughness of the material against his fingers.

Even through two layers of clothing, the crumbling brick and mortar digs into him. Lillium’s bandages smell sharp and sanitised, cutting out the reek of urban decay and unwashed bodies.

Still covering Iris’s mouth, Lillium looks askance. He gazes into the darkness that swallows up the far end of the alley, and his expression turns set and grim.

Iris squints. Ten seconds crawl past; he counts them off by the ticking of Lillium’s watch, only audible in such proximity. Then, out of the dim distance emerges a faint silhouette.

The person, whoever they are, is staggering along as though drunken, lurching and barely avoiding the dumpsters and debris that litter the alley. Iris starts to relax and goes to shove Lillium away from him, all ready to snark at him for being paranoid.

But then a spot of moonlight gilds the meandering figure, outlining it in full for the first time. Spilling out of its skull is a cascade of vines, trailing all down the right side of the body. One leg drags along semi-limply, like a raggedy doll come only partially to life. The whole shape of it flickers, like static between retro television channels. An infected. A glitch. Iris tenses up, his body instinctively choosing the latter option between fight-or-flight. His leg muscles twitch, teetering on the edge of bursting into a run.

Immediately, Lillium presses closer, impossibly closer; he doesn’t risk scuffing his boot against the ground, but he bends his knee so that it pins Iris’s thigh insistently against the wall. There are mere inches between them.

Iris drags his gaze away from the glitch to glare at Lillium, trying to convey _What are you doing?_ and _We need to get the hell out of here!_  and _Personal space, man, have you heard of it?_  all at once.

In Iris’s peripheral vision, the infected inches closer. Absurdly at this critical juncture, though, the bulk of his attention is taken up by the look on Lillium’s face. Lillium’s jaw muscles clench unconsciously, intermittently giving definition to his high cheekbones, and his gaze flicks over Iris’s face, darting but soft. His breaths break warm and quick on Iris’s skin.

If not for the context, Iris would almost say Lillium is psyching himself up to kiss him. The way they’re standing certainly recalls some muscle memory on his part. (Oh, hell. Jerry. Greg. Everybody back at the closest thing he’s had to home. All dead and gone — worse, zombified.)

Out of nowhere Lillium’s words back in Washington State Lab replay in his head: _These guys can’t see anything that isn’t moving, so they rely on their ears. Just stay still when they’re turned to you, and make sure you’re absolutely quiet…_

Right. Right, of course. Mind out of the gutter and all trashy romance novels. 

The infected draws level with them. Iris can feel Lillium tracking its movement by watching Iris, who can’t help but watch in unblinking consternation.

It halts when it is positioned in line with Lillium’s left shoulder, almost all the way past them. There, with a sinister slowness, the glitch turns what’s left of its face eerily in their direction.

What has it heard? Iris’s heartbeat? Lillium’s? Their breathing, harsh and choppy with fear? Iris wonders idly if the glitch can tell there’s two of them, or if they’re close enough together that it can’t distinguish them. (That can’t be Lillium’s plan, can it?) Iris’s right hand remains fisted in Lillium’s vest, but his left moves subconsciously to his throat, where he can still just about feel the agonising slice of the spawncamper’s knife.

Iris’s eyes widen as the glitch takes a step closer to them. Lillium’s jaw sets in a hard line and he pulls his hand away from Iris’s elbow, reaching for his gun in its holster. Against Iris’s thigh, Lillium tenses up, and that’s when Iris realises, his gut lurching, that he means to run at the glitch to give Iris a chance.

_Worst case scenario, if you’re cornered by a glitch, just stay. DO NOT MOVE. I’ll come and distract it, and then you’ll run, understood?_

Lillium spins and lunges at the glitch, but Iris is faster. He grabs for Lillium’s hand, and the moment he’s locked onto his wrist, he yanks him along, into the darkness of the alley ahead.

Behind him, Lillium flounders, thrown off-balance, and already Iris can hear the glitch laughing a choked, guttural laughter as it begins to give chase, but he doesn’t care. He just pulls until Lillium is running with him.

_What if you’re the one cornered?_

_Then just run, and don’t look back._

Fat chance. 

Over his shoulder, Lillium fires off a shot to slow the glitch down. Iris scans the fluttering papers stuck to the alley walls desperately. Words and text are useless here. He needs a picture — it doesn’t matter what of, just anything that he can throw. Fumbling for the cookbook in his bag again would be too slow…

There. An advertisement for perfume, a bottle of it sitting innocuously on a table. Iris dashes toward it, letting go of Lillium’s wrist as he does. Lillium runs on for only a few more steps before he notices; then he doubles back to him.

“Iris!” Lillium grabs for his hand to pull him along, but Iris shrugs him off, focusing on the advertisement. 

The glitch rounds a corner and spots them. Heedless of its preexisting injuries, it’s making quick headway.

Iris takes a deep breath and plunges his hand into the advertisement. It sinks in all the way to his elbow. He thinks of the girl: the girl at the stove, her back always to him, her white shift, her ethereal presence. He stops pushing away the almost-memory of her, dredging it up purposely for the first time because right now he needs it, he needs… 

Fire. The perfume bottle rips out of the advertisement all ablaze, and Iris whips around and hurls it toward the glitch as accurately as he can while in a panic.

Turns out he barely needs to aim. Perfume is highly flammable.

The bottle smashes against the glitch’s torso and it yells, animalistic, inhuman. The fire spreads, easily eating up the glitch’s clothes, which are covered in what amounts to an accelerant. Almost immediately the air is full of the smell of burning flesh, and the enormity of what he’s just done hits Iris all of a sudden. The green plant matter is giving off excessive smoke as it reluctantly catches fire. 

He barely feels it as Lillium drags him away, with a death-grip on his wrist. Iris stumbles along after Lillium, and when he makes as if to turn back and look, Lillium tugs him insistently until he faces forward again.

The glitch stops screaming soon enough, which is either another source of horror or a small mercy; Iris can’t decide which.

Four blocks over, when Lillium stops short below a flickering streetlight, Iris complies numbly. 

It takes a few moments more for him to notice Lillium’s fingers, frantic and fluttering over Iris’s arm.

“Stop that,” Iris mumbles, pushing him away weakly.

“You’re hurt,” Lillium replies, terse. He doesn’t desist. “That fire took care of the glitch, but it also burned you.” 

Iris glances down. The sleeves of Lillium’s borrowed jacket are pushed up to his elbows; his right forearm, the one he reached into the advertisement with, is covered in soot and small scorch marks.

“Oh,” Iris says quietly, letting Lillium examine each mark in turn, frowning and humming as he does.

The streetlight flickers on, the effect hypnotic, and Iris sways slightly on his feet. 

Lillium grasps his unharmed forearm to steady him. “Easy there,” he cautions, manoeuvring Iris till he can slump gently down at the base of the streetlamp. Lillium crouches so they’re at the same level.

“These are superficial,” Lillium judges, indicating the burns. “First-degree mostly, thank goodness. The ones on your fingers, though, those will blister a bit, and hurt.”

Iris quirks an eyebrow at him. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

Lillium lingers over the injuries. His fingers, cooled by the evening wind whipping past them as they ran, are soothing against the hot skin. Absently and belatedly, he replies, “Comes in handy. I’ve got books, like I said.”

“And they’re not all about food?” Iris snarks.

That seems to snap Lillium out his reverie. He looks up at Iris, the worried furrow of his brow softening. Iris catches himself thinking that Lillium’s face perhaps isn’t so aggravating this way.

Then Lillium quips, “I have all _sorts_ of books,” with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows, and ruins it.

As Iris splutters, Lillium reaches into his bag and pulls out his bottle of water. “Cup your hands,” he tells Iris, and once Iris does, he pours water over them. “By right we should soak the wound for five minutes, but we’ll just see how long till that drains out from between your fingers. Not like we have a bowl or basin, or anything.”

The cool water feels great. After a while, Iris regains enough presence of mind to ask, “Don’t we need to conserve water? You just used like a third of your bottle on me. Take some of mine.”

Lillium is waving him off before he even finishes speaking. “It’s fine.” He reaches around Iris to retrieve, instead of his bottle, Iris’s first aid kit, which he opens, roots through briefly, and then sets aside.

The water continues dripping from Iris’s cupped hands, creating a slowly spreading puddle on the cement.

“I thought I told you to let me distract it if a glitch cornered you,” Lillium finally says, gingerly breaking the silence.

Iris shakes his head. “I couldn’t.”

Lillium frowns and leans in closer. “Why not?” he asks, not chastising but purely curious, as though they were not discussing his apparent willingness to risk his life for Iris.

The thing is, Iris remembers it all too vividly: the calculated force of the spawncamper’s takedown, just a quick jab to the back of his knee, and then the way his gloved hand grabbed at his hair, immobilising him like — like for a slaughter, heartless and efficient.

And the glitch back at the lab, the one who was reaching for him when he fell down the stairs in the lobby. Its eyes alien in a still semi-human face, unfathomable. He winces at the memory, blinks a couple times as though to clear away the image. He's already had two close calls. He refuses to have a third — or to run away and let Lillium try his luck alone.

“I just couldn’t.” 

Perhaps his hands are shaking, because the water spills faster from them, and moments later Lillium is dabbing them dry with clean cotton and applying a small amount of gel to them. 

“You weren’t supposed to take on a glitch so soon,” Lillium muses as he uses adhesive tape to hold some gauze loosely over the burns. “I wouldn’t have let you. And you… you were worried in the first place about killing them with the gun.”

Iris feels his gut clench at that, threatening to heave. 

But there’s no accusation in Lillium’s expression when he looks up at Iris, just a hurt sort of concern. “Something happened between the lab and now, didn’t it?”

His throat feels like it’s closing up. The only words he manages seem to wobble out into the air. “I didn’t know about spawncampers when I went through the save-point.”

Lillium freezes midway through securing the last piece of gauze. “Did you—?”

“—I came back.” Iris frowns and resists the sudden urge to laugh hysterically. His head thuds against the base of the streetlamp. “How come I can come back?”

Without quite meaning to, he touches his throat again, with his unscathed left hand. Lillium watches him like he’s putting the puzzle pieces together. Neither of them says anything for a while.

“I need to do a better job protecting you,” Lillium vows, his voice low and fierce. It’s not an answer, but then Iris isn’t sure he can handle having his question taken seriously right now. Apparently, if pushed, he can be scarily good at protecting himself.

His lips twist up in an ironic smile at the thought. “Yeah, clearly I’m kicking your ass at that,” he says, and Lillium holds his hand and doesn’t mention how his voice shakes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to make this canon-compliant, right down to what’s in Iris’s bag (panel 241) and which hand he uses to pull stuff out of art (panel 40). By the way, Iris is ambidextrous…? He uses his right hand to pull stuff out but his left to paint (panel 3).
> 
> If there’s fic you want to see that hasn’t been written yet about our apocalypse flower boys, hit me up at [my tumblr](http://www.mimosaeyes.tumblr.com/ask) and I might do it! Including possible sequels in this sort-of ‘verse, I think I’m open to that. (Or even from [that college AU](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10653009) I wrote?)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I’m just as surprised as you are that I actually wrote a second chapter. It’s been gathering dust in my drafts for ages, but school, and writer’s block, and blah blah mental health.
> 
> There’s a fair number of you subscribed, though, so. Here. I dusted it off.

Lillium doesn’t know exactly how long they sit together there, under the streetlight. Not long enough for much colour to return to Iris’s cheeks, but certainly longer than is wise, given how exposed and conspicuous they are. Eventually, instinct wins out over sympathy, and he pulls Iris to his feet, bracing to support his weight.

He feels a pang in his heart as he notices how pliable Iris is — he’s so used to his snark and contrariness that its absence perturbs him. Iris’s palms are clammy and his face is drawn; the flickering light only seems to give it more shadows. Some minutes before, he began swaying even while seated, as though faint, and there was a brief spell where he warned Lillium he might be sick. (He wasn’t, but his face hasn’t gotten any less pale since.)

Lillium’s read books. He can recognise the signs of shock, even if it’s (thankfully) mild in this case. In an ideal situation Lillium would give him overly sugary tea and coax up his low blood pressure. As it stands, however, there’s nothing for it but to keep Iris engaged, until he can get to feeling comfortable and safe again. Assuming that’s possible out here. 

“Come on,” Lillium says senselessly, going for bravado but falling short of it. He shrugs his shoulders, stiff from the weight of his backpack and from sitting still so long. “Don’t go all quiet on me now.” 

Iris barely cracks a smile. “Can’t help it. You finally talked my ear off,” he deadpans. A little more flat-sounding than usual, and not his best repartee, but at least he’s responding. And walking, albeit with Lillium holding his pack for him, and hovering warily at his side.

“Ha ha.” On the pretence of nudging him down a side street, away from the streetlights, Lillium gives in to the urge and reaches forward to take hold of Iris’s left arm again — the one that’s not wrapped in gauze. Iris doesn’t acknowledge him verbally, but he does lean a little into him, grateful for the reassuring touch even if he’s not injured and doesn’t need help walking.

“Why don’t you tell me about something good that’s happened to you. A good memory,” he suggests, if only to give Iris an excuse to talk, and stay in the moment.

It’s frightening to think, but they’re pretty close to defenceless if Iris slips out of it. 

“Something good?”

Iris sounds wrecked. Lillium winces. “It could be anything,” he encourages him. Then, because he sounds way too earnest and sincere now: “But keep it PG, you know? Or else you could cause me actual mental trauma, and then where would we be?” 

Before he’s even finished the sentence, Iris snorts, the sound somewhat strangled.

“Oh, now that’s attractive,” Lillium teases. 

“Your face is attractive,” Iris mumbles. Then freezes. “Wait, no. I didn’t mean it like that—” 

“—All I’m hearing is you admitting you subconsciously _know_  my face is attractive.” Lillium gives him a truly shit-eating grin that doesn’t falter even when Iris shoves at him, too weakly for it to make much of an impact.

He keeps up the banter as they go along, because that’s what Lillium’s good at. Even if it means he has to cackle with quite a bit more earnestness than he can really feel at the moment, what with Iris out of commission.

They keep to deserted alleyways and have to rely on the faint moonlight to see. Apart from softly cursing under his breath when he steps in a puddle or something of questionable origin, Iris doesn’t say much else.

They finally arrive at a run-down husk of a warehouse, which Lillium briskly cases and then declares their best shot at a secure spot in which to bed down for the night. He knows of another building in better condition a couple of blocks away, but from the looks of it they won’t make it that far tonight. Anyway, dawn isn’t too far away, and to make sure they both get enough rest, they probably can’t afford even to take turns standing watch. 

Lillium knows he won’t sleep soundly anyway.

He lets their backpacks slump unceremoniously to the ground, and Iris pretty much does the same with his entire body.

It’s cold and drafty inside the building. The night breeze slips in through the crack under the door and a hole punched through the dirty glass window. The cool air goose-dimples Lillium’s skin. And even after several minutes of rubbing his hands together and blowing on them, cheeks puffing almost comically, Iris is still visibly shivering.

But they can’t risk a fire, and they’re both too tired to look for kindling anyway. The logical thing would be to huddle for warmth, but Lillium’s not about to be the first to suggest that.

Instead he contents himself with giving Iris a once-over. The younger boy has folded himself down so that he’s curled and propped up against the wall — he looks rather crumpled, really.

Even as he watches, Iris begins fiddling with his new bandages.

“Don’t mess with those,” Lillium warns, but without any real heat. “I’ll check and redo them in the morning, and if they aren’t intact…” 

Iris pulls a face but stops. Stretching, he remarks, “They’re pretty snug. You make a good nurse.” 

It’s the perfect lead-in. Lillium literally can’t resist waggling his eyebrows at Iris and suggestively correcting him, “I make a good and  _hot_ nurse, thank you very much.” 

Iris’s next words resolutely steer clear of dignifying that with a response. “Seriously, though. I guess you must be practiced at doing bandages single-handed.”

He tries not to, he honestly does, but Lillium finds himself touching his own bandages self-consciously before he can help himself. He knows Iris wants to ask about them. Iris has many questions — about demifloras, about where they’re going, about who he is, or who they are, even were, to each other — that Lillium isn’t answering. At least, not yet.

“Try to get some sleep,” he says at last, voice soft in the air. He plants himself a couple feet away from Iris, and crosses his arms so that his hand remains surreptitiously on his gun.

Humming noncommitally, Iris huddles in the jacket he’s borrowed from Lillium and closes his eyes. His bandaged arm sits awkwardly on his lap, and he has to repeatedly tug the jacket sleeve down to protect his fingers from the cold. Lillium exhales through his nose in something resembling a sigh and settles in, observing him. He’s still too keyed up to sleep.

For a time there’s only the twin rhythms of their breathing, and the tranquility of watching the creases in Iris’s forehead gradually smoothen out. Iris’s chin droops forward several times. Each time, he catches himself and jerks awake momentarily again.

“Just lean your head back against the wall, will you?” Lillium grouses, somewhere between concern and bemused frustration. “Or you could lie down.”

Iris surfaces from his shallow slumber and creaks open one eye to peer at him. “What’re you keeping watch for? Not like glitches have the brains to sneak around.” 

“Spawncampers might. They do rounds sometimes, on the lookout in case we got caught out at night. They hardly expect to find anyone so stupid, though, so we’ll hear them before they find us.” The moment Lillium answers, he winces and directs an apologetic look at Iris. Iris’s eyes are wide open now, gleaming in the faint moonlight, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he gulps in air, trying to steady his suddenly arrhythmic breathing. 

“Don’t wanna lean my head back,” Iris says after a moment. He gestures vaguely, meaninglessly, then says with an air of explication, “My throat.” 

Brow furrowing, Lillium looks away from him. _How come I can come back?_ Iris asked. A lost look in his eyes. When he took Iris from the Lab, he never meant for him to see this side of the world — at least, not this quickly, or traumatically. He was supposed to be a buffer between him and the horrors of their reality. Instead, within mere hours Iris has killed his first glitch and will probably have the scars — not only physical — to prove it, for the rest of his life. Lillium’s fingers twitch and he clenches them till it stops.

“Guess it doesn’t matter though, if they get me. Although I’m not volunteering for round two,” Iris muses, but with a hard edge to his voice. He forces a shrug. “Anyway. You don’t have to watch over me while I sleep.”

_I need to do a better job protecting you_ , Lillium remembers vowing earlier on. Before he can vocalise his response, however, Iris adds, “Plus, ’s a li’l creepy.” Exhaustion makes him slur the words slightly.

In reply Lillium makes a mock offended noise. “Please. You’re just trying to be cagey after you admitted you find my face attractive.”

When too long passes without protest, Lillium takes a peek at him. He’s back on the cycle of dozing off then snapping awake again.

“Oh for goodness’ sake,” Lillium huffs, and scoots over, closing the distance between them. The sound and movement rouse Iris again.

“Mm?” he mumbles, as Lillium wiggles into position.

“Lie down,” Lillium tells him. When Iris merely blinks at him slowly, Lillium tsks and tugs on his sleeve. “Head, lap. Snoozles.”

Suddenly Iris is wider awake — even blushing, if Lillium’s eyes do not deceive him in this low light. “What? No. That’s weird.”

Lillium sighs wearily. “Come on, my thighs make good pillows! As that outdated youth slang would have it: they be ‘thicc’.” 

Iris stares at him for a long moment, seeming to deliberate something in his head. “First of all, please never say that again. And second of all, you’re not that much older than me,” he finally says, levering himself down to rest his head on Lillium’s lap. “Don’t start in with dad-joke levels of ancient slang.”

He seems to want to say more, but it stops on the tip of his tongue. Iris turns onto his side so that his back is to Lillium and he’s looking out into the dark expanse of the warehouse.

Tiredness wins out. Before long Iris is breathing more deeply and evenly, and his trembling stills. Lillium looks down at him and is seized by the sudden urge to card his fingers through his hair. Instead, however, he merely squints closer — there is some soot in Iris’s black locks, left there from the glitch he set on fire.

Gingerly, hinging on that fragile justification for his tender action, Lillium brushes the ash off.

“Thanks,” Iris mutters, almost inaudible. Somehow Lillium’s not even surprised by this point. Iris seems determined to nod off haltingly. Not that he can blame him, really.

But it’s easier to talk to him when he’s facing away, when Lillium isn’t confronted with the reality of his eyes, and the haunted look that has only recently taken up residence in them. So Lillium clears his throat and replies, “I think I should be the one to say thank you. Might’ve escaped your notice, but you saved my life tonight.”

“And deprived you of a big heroic sacrifice at the same time,” Iris observes wryly. He can joke about it now that they’ve averted that particular reality.

Lillium shifts slightly. He prods at Iris’s shoulder. “What, is it not a big heroic sacrifice to allow you to sleep on me?”

Iris groans and tells him to shut up. Lillium is glad he does not ask whether Lillium would have come back, too.

After that, Iris is silent for so long that Lillium almost thinks he’s really fallen asleep this time. Then he hears, in the smallest imaginable voice: “Earlier. You asked about something good that’s happened to me?” 

A pause. “I mean, there’s you.” 

Emotion chokes Lillium’s reply. It takes him several moments, but eventually he manages, in a deceptively cool-sounding tone, “Well, flattery will get you everywhere, as you know.” It’s ruined a little by how he then compulsively tugs his jacket tighter around Iris, and checks to make sure his bandaged arm isn’t in an awkward position. Wouldn’t do to have him waking up with a numb arm, after all.

He dozes lightly, startling awake again with every sound, and each time peering with bleary eyes down at Iris, as if to reassure himself that he’s still safe, right here. He starts out with one hand on his gun, but at some point he wakes up to find he has unconsciously moved it to support Iris’s head.

Iris sleeps more deeply, soundly. At some point in the night, Iris turns over toward Lillium, burying his face in Lillium’s shirt like he’s taking shelter. His throat is bared, partially, to Lillium alone.

Lillium’s smiling so much at that, it’s almost worth it when his leg goes numb under the weight of Iris’s head.

Although… not so much when Iris wakes up yelling from a nightmare, and punches him in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess if I keep going, I would alternate third-person focalisation through Iris and Lillium. Each chapter is quite self-contained so far, so I hope it’s okay whenever I do stop.


End file.
